Research has shown that about half of all adults make New Year’s resolutions. However, fewer than 10% manage to keep them for more than a few months. As a professor of behavioural addiction I know how easy people can fall into bad habits and why on trying to give up those habits it is easy to relapse. Resolutions usually come in the form of lifestyle changes and changing behaviour that has become routine and habitual (even if they are not problematic) can be hard to do. The most common resolutions are: losing weight, doing more exercise, quitting smoking and saving money. The main reason >>>

Wikimedia Commons By Carol Blair Vaughn Costa Rica is called by many “The Happiest Place on Earth”, including the Happy Planet Index which rated us #1 in 2015, and the U.N.’s World Happiness Report, which rated us #12. We came in behind Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, and The Netherlands – such cold places!! But is this ranking scientific, or just a tourist label from those wanting to make our beaches more crowded? Turns out, there IS a “Science of Happiness”, a new field of social science called positive psychology, which is not to be confused with just positive thinking or self-help. >>>

Kemmner Posted: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 3:37 pm Christine Kemmner receives doctorate of psychology from Marshall University >>>

Joining the gym, banishing junk food from your diet and slashing your alcohol intake.As the clock strikes midnight across the globe, and the world heralds the start of 2016, millions will resolve to make radical changes to their lives.There will be vows to shed weight, quit smoking and get fit, resolutions to spend more time helping others, take on new challenges and spend more time with loved ones. But, within weeks, days in some sorry cases, these New Year's resolutions will be broken, discarded and long forgotten.Is it possible to stick at a resolution - just one? And why do people find it >>>

Could Holiday Traditions Be the Fountain of Youth?

1 week ago

Arabs in Israel are suffering a severe shortage of clinical psychologists, and Joint List MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) believes she has found a solution.“It is important for Arabs to have access to Arab psychologists because of language and cultural differences that can impede proper treatment,” Zoabi told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.For example, if an Arab child rape victim does not speak Hebrew, the psychologist will not be able to optimally treat the patient, she explained. There can be a six-month wait to see an Arab psychologist.Only >>>

AN expert on the psychology and neuroscience of self-control and addiction at the University of Southern California, John Monterosso, has offered six tips this holiday season for sticking to New Year's resolutions. Outlined in an article on the USCDornsife site, the psychologist provides pointers for giving a grounded, realistic perspective to the tradition of drafting resolutions. Failed resolutions are not harmless Failing feels bad, and knocks >>>

Happiness is one of the most important things in life, yet it's also one of the hardest to study.Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest and most complete studies of adult life ever conducted. Waldinger described some of the secrets to happiness revealed by the study in a recent TED talk.The study followed two cohorts of white men for 75 years, starting in 1938:•268 Harvard sophomores as part of the "Grant Study" led by Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant•456 12- to 16-year-old boys who grew up in inner-city Boston as >>>

Arabs in Israel are suffering an acute shortage of clinical psychologists and Joint List MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) says she has found the solution.“It is important for Arabs to have access to Arab psychologists because of language and cultural differences that can impede proper treatment,” Zoabi told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.For example, if an eight-year old Arab child rape victim does not speak Hebrew, the psychologist will not be able to optimally treat the patient, she explained. There can be a six-month wait to see an >>>

3. Get intrinsically motivated.  Why do you want to break or make a habit? What is it about the goal you've set for yourself that makes it so important to you? When you start a self-improvement project, it's important to make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.  A study published in January in the Journal of Clinical Psychology finds that one of the best predictors of whether you'll achieve a goal is your motivation. "Think about your reasons for setting your goal,"said Emily Mailey, assistant professor of kinesiology at Kansas State University and one of the study's authors, in a statement. >>>